We note the recent spat between Labour and Plaid councillors over claims of reporting Asian business’s to the UK Border Agency and over claims of racism by the UK Border Agency.
The polices of Border Agency, the UK Government and European Governments, mean that the UKBA focuses on business’s where they think they will find poorer people with darker skin. And this makes these polices racist.
In 2010 196,00 people migrated to the UK. The majority of these are from the Europe, but India and Pakistan account for 15% of those arriving. Of the top ten countries that send the most people to the UK, countries that are significantly poorer than the UK account for 26% of these people
According to the ‘The Migration Observatory at Oxford University’ in 2010 39,030 people were removed from the UK .
The top ten countries where people are removed to account for nearly 50% of those removed. Of these, there is a clear bias towards countries poorer than the UK. (India, Brasil, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Vietnam) Only 2 countries in the top ten (USA and Malaysia) are similar to the UK
No Borders activists have watched UKBA Officers at work on Queen Street, inviting the public to ‘discuss’ their immigration status with officers. In a period of 2 hours the officers only picked people of colour for their discussions.
The real story is that people in Riverside and all over Cardiff face uncertain futures, destitution and incredible hardship because of the policies of the UK Government and all European Governments. People have to work ‘illegally’ to survive and can be exploited by unscrupulous employers.
It may well be a councillor’s duty, as an elected government official, to pass on information to the relevant authorities about illegality and it’s great to hear councillors speak up about the policies and operations of the Border Agency.
But we think it would be amazing if wasn’t just at election time!
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October 27, 2012 at 7:52 pm
Nigel
In France, the mere fact that you are not white makes you an automatic suspect and the cops will say to you “papers please.” Not sure how close we’re to that in the UK but one thing for sure is that, due to a lot of pressure on UKBA to keep immigration numbers down and their inability to track true illegal immigrants, they are now turning to draconians measures on the legal immigrants/students/workers/tourists.
Even those who’ve already been granted a British passport. There was this professor, 7/7 survivor, who wanted to sue Murdoch for phone hacking, well guess what? Soon after he was investigated and harassed by UKBA for having a semi British passport and faced deportation.
I have myself appealed against one of their decision and won. Now I will sue the officer for libel and malice or put simply, “abusing his position as a UKBA officer to make false allegation about me and on official paper.”